The landlord’s face beamed the whole evening afterwards, and he bowed politely to Federigo as he passed the table.  The latter, the next time he came near Salve, whispered rather scornfully—­

“I believe my sister has bartered away her soul this evening, and promised to marry that old money-bag there who keeps the tavern.  Congratulate us, amigo mio!”

Salve observed that the said money-bag conferred now more than once with the man at the head of his own table, and was apparently making terms with him; and that the latter also, when he thought he was not observed, glanced over at himself in a way that was very far from putting him at his ease.

The American who had spoken to him before—­a tall, athletic-looking man, with a fair beard round a hard Yankee face, and with a remnant of gold lace on the sleeve of his jacket—­had since been at the gaming-table, and had been losing one doubloon after another.

“They don’t play fair, my lad!” he cried in English to Salve, to whom he seemed anxious to make up.

“I daresay not,” was the reply; “it’s a vile den.”

“What country do you hail from?”

“Norway.”

“Ah!  Norwegian.  Good sailors.”

“Deserted at Rio?” he asked then, with a laugh, as if he expected, as a matter of course, an answer in the affirmative.

“Shall I play for you?” he asked presently.

“No money.”

“Here’s a guinea on account of your wages on board the ’Stars and Stripes,’ for Valparaiso and Chinchas!” he cried, with a laugh that was heard above the surrounding din; and flinging a gold piece on the table, he lost it.

He turned, and putting his hand to his mouth, shouted—­

“One more on account!” and another gold piece shared the fate of the first.

“One more on account!” there came again, and with the same result.

Salve had by this time had about enough of this free-and-easy and undesired playing on his account.  The man’s face, moreover, with all its joviality, by no means attracted him, and he shouted to him in a sharply-protesting tone—­

“Play for yourself, Yankee.”

The American seemed not to be able to hear on that side, for he repeated, coolly nodding to him—­

“One more on account!”

Salve’s patience was exhausted.  He had been sitting all this time squeezed up in the narrow space between the bench and the wall with people on both sides of him, preventing his getting out; but now grasping his neighbour violently by the shoulder, he sprang all at once across the table and over to the unabashed Yankee, with an irresistible feeling that, come what might, he would get out into the freedom of the open air once more.

Just then there came from the furthest room a cry of “police.”  The lights in that room were at once extinguished; and a moment after, those in the room where Salve was on the point of falling foul of the American (who, to his great surprise, found him all of a sudden confronting him) went out also.